There are a number of telephone systems that are very well known in the art. The oldest system, and probably still the most widely used, is a public switched telephone network (PSTN) where a simple telephone is physically coupled to a telephone network via conducting wires. An extension to the PSTN comprises a cordless telephone system, typically used in a home or an office, where a portable telephone communicates in an unwired manner with a console in the home. The console is wired to the PSTN in place of the simple telephone, and the communication between the console and the portable phone is generally via a radio-frequency (RF) carrier, although other methods such as using an infra-red carrier are also known in the art.
A cable television (CATV) system may also be used as another wired system for transferring standard circuit switch or Internet Protocol (IP) telephone signals. The CATV system is coupled at its up-link side to an IP network and to the PSTN. At the down-link side, e.g., in a home or office environment, a landline telephone may be coupled to the CATV system via a modem. The CATV system allocates up-link and down-link channels which do not interfere with television signals in the CATV system.
Cellular telephone systems use wireless mobile cellular telephones which communicate with a central base-station. Communication between the mobile telephones and the base-station is via a cellular RF carrier, the cellular RF carrier being at a different frequency, and having substantially larger powers, than the RF carrier of the cordless telephone system described above.
A wired cellular system, wherein cellular telephones of a cellular telephone system are physically connected to cables of the CATV system, is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/360,861, which is assigned to the assignee of the present application. In such a wired cellular system it is important to have as high an operating capacity as possible, while still operating with a basic CATV architecture. Such an architecture typically has a small number of return path receivers for each forward transmit section.